So, I have lived in my home for my whole life until recently. I was literally born into the house. We live out in the country and when my mom went into labor it was the middle of winter and there had been an ice storm, and my dad was very reluctant to travel the icy county roads with his pregnant wife. So I was born upstairs, in the master bedroom. Until recently, I hadn’t thought much of this, but now it seems to be a lot more important given recent circumstances.
A short history on my experience regarding strange activity in my house- most of it occurred during childhood. I contributed most of it to an overactive imagination and all that bullshit until recently. A lot of it consisted of just seeing out of place people. That’s the best way I can explain it. That’s how I felt when I saw them, like they were just out of place. Not quite right. These are vague memories, but I remember well the emotions that accompanied them. And the thing was, they weren’t bad emotions. Whoever they were, they made me feel good. Like everything was going to be okay.
This house I’m talking about, my home, is about 200 years old according to my dad. I am a single child. Many people, friends of mine and my girlfriend have claimed to have had paranormal experiences in the house, or whatever you want to call it. All of these accounts happened when I was not present (or was at least in a different part of the house), and the accounts span across a variety of people who are not all connected with each other. A friend that lives near me ( a couple houses down) had friends over, and they walked over to my house at night to see if I was there, wanting to hang out. They did this pretty frequently, but I was on spring vacation, in Arkansas. I woke up to several texts from one of them, and talked to each one the next day. They all reported the same thing. They approached my house, saw a female figure up in my window, turned around and started walking back, heard a scream, and then ran.
I never experienced anything negative in that house regarding ghosts or whatever. Until recently. I’m 19, going to community college nearby, and I was living with just my dad. My mom and dad divorced when I was 14, and my mom lives in New Zealand now with my step-dad and half-brother (it’s awesome there). Two weeks ago, my dad left to go to a conference in Chicago (our house is in the boonies of central Illinois) for some mandatory judge/lawyer thing involving continuing education for that line of work (he’s a circuit court judge). He was supposed to be gone for a week. I was left to watch after my beagle Shiloh and the house etc. Now, the first weird thing that happened, happened on monday, the second day my dad was gone. I was downstairs watching TV, and I went to the kitchen to get one of the powerades that we always had. The ZERO fruit punch ones, I love those. For some reason, the cupboard was cleared out of them, and there should have been about three left. I figured I drank them all, simple as that. So I continued to watch TV for awhile and then decided to go upstairs and get to bed. When I went up to my room, there were three full powerades sitting on my bed. Now this seems really menial, but it scared the shit out of me. I knew I was the only one in the house and that I didn’t just absent-mindedly bring all three full powerades up to my room. I put them on the floor and went to sleep a few hours later with the lights on.
The next day my girlfriend came over. I didn’t tell her about the powerade thing because she is really sensitive to spooky stuff and gets freaked out quite easily. It was daytime, and we were up in my room, taking advantage of having the house to ourselves. This is going to seem pretty irrelevant, but it’s not. My girlfriend can be pretty loud when we have sex, so it usually happens when my dad is out of the house. One of the things she yelled this time was, “Oh my fucking GOD,” a pretty generic sex exclamation, not unique to the situation. This is important for later.
The next day went of without any hitches, it was Wednesday, and my girlfriend and I both had classes in the morning, so I drove us to school. Came back home by myself after school, walked the dog a couple of times, watched some TV, went to bed. Thursday is when shit started getting really weird.
I woke up Thursday morning to hear my dog barking. This alone freaked me out a bit, because my dog never barks, ever. She is usually really calm and kind of lethargic most of the time. So I went downstairs, dreading the situation but wanting to confront it nonetheless. As I was walking down my stairs I heard talking that sounded like my dad. All that I could make out was the voice saying, “Just me.” I went into the kitchen where my dog is gated in and by the time I got there my dog was whimpering and standing in the middle of the kitchen, looking up towards me. I stepped over the gate and stood in the doorway, watching my dog. She was acting very strange, looking at the air right by me and walking towards that area, kind of crouched, sniffing, and then darting back and whimpering, and then sniffing at a distance. I looked by me, and there was nothing there. By this time, my heart was racing, and I was more than a little freaked out. I was frozen where I was, and I was confused and still groggy from just waking. I didn’t really understand what was happening. I said, “Dad?” and then right after I said that my dog starting growling and baring her teeth at whatever she had been looking at. Still nothing, no figure, no temperature change, no weird feeling besides fear. I took the leash and walked my dog outside, intent to get her away from whatever it was she thought she was seeing so that she could stop freaking me the fuck out. When I brought her back inside, she was fine.
The rest of the day I spent alone at my house. It was that evening when I was sitting in my room, on my laptop, and I heard the door in the hallway to the master bedroom open. Footsteps approached my door and paused there. I was frozen, like fucking paralyzed. Couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, nothing. Then my door to my room opened and my dad came in.
"Hey!" he said. What the fuck. He scared the shit out of me, and he wasn’t supposed to be home this early. "Jesus, you scared the fuck out of me!" I said, "I thought you weren’t going to be home until Saturday?" He stood there smiling, and that’s when I noticed something strange about him, a little off. Out of place, so to speak. "I’m home," he replied.
Now, I have to interject here, I didn’t think anything was too odd about this situation. My dad has been an off-and-on recovering alcoholic for a few years, and this kind of behavior was easily attributed to him being inebriated, if that’s what it was. I didn’t say anything. “You know I really love you, I always have,” he said, still grinning, and then he left my room. At this point, I didn’t really think much of anything. I was still wired from the adrenaline rush of hearing the footsteps etc. I wasn’t thinking about the fact that I hadn’t heard my dad come in the house, nor had I seen headlights or heard a car pulling in the driveway. I just wanted to sleep, it was late. So I slept. I feel like an idiot in retrospect.
Friday morning. I woke up, got dressed, got ready for class. I was texting my girlfriend, telling her that my dad had come home early and that we would have to postpone our plans for that night, considering her house was out of the question (endless siblings, parents home, etc). I had noticed when I was getting dressed that my dad’s car wasn’t in the driveway, which was odd. Unless he left early for work, it should be there. I leave about an hour before him on friday mornings for my early class. Not thinking much of it, I went downstairs, looking forward to a quick breakfast before I headed out. I got a text on my way downstairs from my dad, reminding me to turn down the thermostat before I left because we had to conserve propane. So I figured he must have gone off to work early that morning after all.
I entered my kitchen. My dad stood there, in the middle of the room, grinning at me. I knew something was very very very wrong. He was holding hands with my mother, who was also grinning. My dad started to speak, “Always loved you,” and it wasn’t his voice. He sounded like my friend who would come over to hang out. I stood there, horrified, knowing this was just not right, just totally out of place and just wrong. This wasn’t reality. Both of them grinning, and their eyes were just … vacant. Neither of them were looking directly at me, just in my direction. My mother opened her mouth to speak, still grinning, and yelled, “Oh my fucking GOD,” sounding exactly like my girlfriend. I found myself quietly saying “no.” My mother spoke again, “Love we’ve always loved we’ve always loved you alway we’ve loved you my precious little …” and then my dad, this time speaking with my own voice, and grinning the whole time, “Dad, you know I love you,” he said. And I knew, I knew what the fuck that was from. It was a conversation me and my dad had when he first wanted to get sober and he had broken down about being a horrible father and I told him that I had always loved him, just like that, with those exact words, in that exact way. I fucking BROKE, I turned, ran from my house, and never looked back. Had my neighbor get my dog for me.
I’m staying with a friend right now. My dad came back from Chicago and he’s staying in the house now. I told him everything. He thinks I was taking drugs. I’ve convinced him to bring me some of my things, and I’m just trying to decide what to do. I can’t stop crying. My mom doesn’t even know about it, I don’t want to bother her. I’m scared for my dad.
Credit: Reddit user krokee64
Comments